Rating: 
Summary: Worth it for info on JDS...
Review: Joyce Maynard's writing has always seemed to me short on introspection & long on gossip, snippy observations & name-dropping. This book is no different. The passages on her own family seem self-serving & ungenerous at best. Nevertheless the information on Salinger is priceless, as long as one keeps in mind that this is Maynard's refabrication of a historical event. What I would die to read now is JDS's version, which, since according to her he writes every day, must exist. Just think: Holden Caulfield meets Lolita _ the ultimate American novel. What a way to end a millenium. Or start one.
Rating: 
Summary: How much did Frank McCourt get paid to endorse this trash?
Review: It was bound to happen: readers stopped caring about the minutae of Maynard's thoroughly ordinary life. So she rolled out the big guns and scrapped together recollections of an ages-old and very brief pedophilic relationship with J.D. Salinger. That anyone even bought this book is a testimony not to Maynard's style or skill, but to the amazingly gifted reculsive Salinger's ability to still draw a crowd. I wish Picador had published his unreleased novel Hapworth 16, 1924 instead.
Rating:
Summary: Two Thumbs Down!!
Review: I agree with the A reader from New England. This book is a HUGE disappointment. It's mean-spirited, self-serving, emotionally dead, a Joyce Carol Oates novel without color, humor, insight or compassion. Definitely Sally Jesse Raphael material & no more. Blecchhh!!!
Rating: 
Summary: The book is true, honest, and painful, and it is excellent.
Review: Page by page, Joyce Maynard in this book pulls at her own skin, tearing off little pieces of it, revealing the blood, bone, gristle and tendon inside. The book has very little to do with J.D. Salinger, who figures prominently in reviews of the book and whose putative privacy interests are placed at issue; to be sure, Salinger is revealed, but only incidentally. His description is like one given by the victim of an offense who refuses to dwell excessively on the personality of the perpetrator, lest that personality excuse.The book is Joyce Maynard growing. This is not merely an introspective Joyce, for she has apparently always been that; this is not merely a self-promotional Joyce, for that, too, is apparently, second (if not first) nature. This is Joyce forgiving herself for being frail, for making mistakes, for taking up more space than is her due (as her sister intimated), for striving, for being herself, for loving her mother and her father, who hurt her. This book is Joyce Maynard's story. She has the right to tell it. If J.D. Salinger has something to say, he can tell his story another day in aother book. He needs defenders less, certainly, than Joyce did when she exploded into the national consciousness as an unprepared, if audacious, Yale undergraduate.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and well written
Review: All the Salinger fans who are howling at Joyce for violating his privacy need to get a life. This book is for anyone who succumbed to the charms of an older, sophisticated man who should have known better than to toy with the emotions of a young girl that, I am sure, he never had any interest in growing old with. I do not mean this as a slam on Joyce - she strikes me as a person that a man would be lucky to grow old with. The best part of the book is Salinger's curse on her "you love the world." Reminded me so much of my brother in law, who hates the world. What a narrow and bitter life he and JD must lead!!!
Rating:
Summary: Joyce Maynard Grows Up
Review: I feel like I grew up with Joyce Maynard, having discovered and depended on her weekly newspaper column, Domestic Affairs, when I was newly married and starting my own family. Reading her column made me feel less isolated and alone in my own struggles as I tried to find the balance between myself and my new life as a wife and mother. However, I could never quite shake the feeling after reading her column that it was a little too sugar coated - and the sense that in her short scenarios of family life there was something she wasn't saying - which is also what my friends have said about the letters I wrote them way back when. I consider this new book a gift from a dear friend. She admits readily that there is, indeed, more to the stories she told to her readers in the 80's, and feels compelled to finish the story now. Somehow, Joyce Maynard's "coming of age" makes me more comfortable with my own place in the world.
Rating: 
Summary: One thumb down
Review: The question is this: Without all the pre-release hype and hoopla about the Salinger business, would ANYONE have bought this book? Highly unlikely, if you ask me, unless you've been following Joyce Maynard's career over the years, and have some strange and perverted yearning to know all the details of her every waking moment from birth to present. I confess to having read At Home in the World largely based, myself, on being suckered in by the aforementioned hype and hoopla about Salinger. (OUCH! I was snookered! There is nothing there of any substance whatsoever. Just the author's petty snivelings and a list of JD's eccentricities.) Ms. Maynard's attempt to portray Salinger as some type of pedophile/Humbert Humbert comes across as nothing more than a sorry and bitter attempt at revenge. Even till the end, Maynard can't seem to come to terms with the knowledge that she was unceremoniously dumped by someone who failed to find her as fascinating as she finds herself. She goes back to challenge Salinger personally, apparently never even considering that he wouldn't even remember who the hell she was after 25 years. As if he'd been sitting there in his rocking chair in Vermont, mulling over the circumstances of their demise all these many years or something In all fairness, this was almost a good book. It could have been much more interesting book had the author fleshed out her portraits of her parents a bit more, as well as given more depth to her marriage and post-JD years. It had the potential, perhaps, but Maynard seemed to get bogged down in details about peas and acupuncture. Unless and until you've read everything else on your reading "wish list," skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: A unique story of a chapter in America literary history.
Review: There have been some unpleasant, strident reviews of this book. I'm very close to putting book reviewers in the same catagory as television talking heads - the group that Calvin Trillin calls the Sabbath Gasbags. This is a facinating book by a talented writer. It reveals not only a unique experience but will certainly serve as a warning to young writers to beware of mentors with their own agenda. "Why do we have to know this," said one reviewer. Well, we don't have to. But if this book had not been written a unique chapter in the American literary community would be lost. Regardless of how you feel about personal revelations of this kind, once you start this book you will not put it down.
Rating:
Summary: I highly recommend this book
Review: This book is not a tell-all book about J.D. Salinger, and those looking for such a book would do well to look elsewhere. This is a book about a woman who came to a point in her life where, it seems to me, she seemed to need to reconcile her past with her future. Ms. Maynard has a voice that rings very true in the telling of her story. She does not try to persuade her reader in any manner, and in fact, her style is that of a reporter telling us the facts about what occurred from her childhood to the present -- including the time in her life when she was romantically involved with J.D. Salinger. Some might feel that Salinger's rights were violated in the telling of this tale, but I am not one of those people. Ms. Maynard said nothing that struck me as anything particularly intimate about Mr. Salinger. There was nothing I read about him which made me feel that, if I were Mr. Salinger, I might be embarassed. (Though if I WERE Mr. Salinger I'd be mortified and embarrassed by the fact that I'd been romantically linked to an 18 year old when I was in my 50's!) Beyond that, there are very few details of Salinger's life which are revealing. If anything, I was more embarrassed for Ms. Maynard's ex-husband, as I found his actions far more reprehensible than much of what I read of Salinger's actions. His behavior during the birth of two of his children was shocking, to say the least, and deeply disturbing. There are many things Maynard reveals about herself, and the thing I enjoy most about her writing is her very real way of speaking. It is very matter- of-fact, "I'm only human." There is a great deal of comfort in that, and I think many people will take a better understanding of themselves from this book. Reading _At Home In The World_ is a bit like reading someone's diary. Only without the guilt. Ms. Maynard puts herself on the line with this book. She is a courageous woman, and I have no doubt that many will benefit from the strength she has shown in being comfortable enough with herself and who she is to share her stories with those who choose to look into the window of her world. I highly recommend this book. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Rating:
Summary: Frank McCourt is right on the money!
Review: At Home In The World is funny, painful and most of all real. I don't see this as an attempt to blow JD Salinger's cover, rather as the best way for an openly, candid writer like Joyce Maynard to let go of the deepest secrets she kept for so long. Each page of At Home In The World was loaded with detached and vivid details of the life of a child who was taught from the beginning to write and to achieve greatness. For someone like JD Salinger to come along and acknowledge her talents as a writer, it's not surprising that he made such a tremendous impression on Maynard's life. Most of all, we see two tragically human characters, Maynard and Salinger, with all of their flaws, and to me, that's refreshing! I respect any human's right to privacy, however, I also believe that JD Salinger was old enough to know that he ran the risk of being exposed when he invited Joyce Maynard into his life.
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